Geocaching in Shropshire and beyond…

Custom cache icons now on the Oregon

I was reading this article which mentions new Beta firmware for the Oregon 550t (available here) which now allows you to add your own custom symbols for waypoints, including replacing all the Geocaching icons used on the unit.

I’ve always found the built in geocaching icons to be a bit small and really hard to see when overlaid on the OS maps when out caching. We usually cache by starting in one area and then just picking caches off the map to go to next, with no real advance plan of where we will be going. Being able to see where the caches are clearly on an OS map is thus really important to us.

To date, we’ve carried on using Memory Map on a PDA for this as the geocaching icons are easier to see, but with the new beta firmware it got me thinking about seeing if I can use the great Memory Map icons on my Oregon. Turns out it’s not as hard as I expected :-).

Even better is that you can double tap on the icons and get taken into the full cache details, just like you can using Memory Map with Cachemate on a PDA :-).

Here are a couple of screenshots:

I’m not sure if the new firmware is available on the Oregon 300 / 400t range yet but it’s only a matter of time if it’s not there already. If anyone wants a copy of the icons I’ve converted from Memory Map and how to use them (it’s a simple matter of dropping them into a folder on your GPS) then let me know :-).